ROME (AFP)–The Italian mafia, the country’s organized crime network and its biggest enterprise, has not been affected by the global economic crisis, a report by an Italian business association said Tuesday.

The mafia has a turnover of EUR130 billion – surpassing any other Italian enterprise in 2008 – and a profit approaching EUR70 billion, said the report by Confesercenti, a group of 270,000 businesses specializing in the tourism and service sectors. “Unlike other businesses, the mafia has been little affected by the international economic and financial crisis,” the report said.

That fact makes the mafia “even more dangerous,” said the association’s president Marco Venturi. He said the mafia could use the current weakness in other businesses and the uncertainty in the economy to boost its position. The mafia’s “huge financial resources allow it to carve out new chunks of the market, to profit from the lack of liquidity, to acquire real estate and businesses,” the report said.

The main revenue sources for the mafia are drug trafficking (EUR59 billion), racketeering (EUR9 billion) and usury (EUR12.6 billion). These are followed by arms trafficking (EUR5.8 billion), contraband (EUR1.2 billion) and prostitution (EUR6 million). According to the report, the mafia is heavily involved in housing construction, which accounts for 37.5% of its profits, as well as retailing and restaurants. Some 180,000 merchants were forced to take out loans at exorbitant rates from mafia clans this year. In September 2007, the Italian employers’ association, Confindustria, took a step in its fight against the mafia by excluding members who agreed to pay the ” pizzo,” a charge imposed on businesses by the mafia.